


lost souls wandering by the sea

by allumerlesoir



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Grief, Loss, M/M, Mentions of Violence, PTSD, Trauma, self harm tw, synesthete!Bucky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-08
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-05-31 22:55:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6490621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allumerlesoir/pseuds/allumerlesoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the dark, he wishes to see the colors again. He knows, though, that they are gone from him now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. in his heartsick anguish

**Author's Note:**

> Two years later, I return to the synesthete!Bucky 'verse that I developed. This fic takes place somewhere in-between the others, after falling but before rising again. It's something of a personal fic, as well, as were my earlier synesthete!Bucky fics. More on that in the end notes, due to spoilers. I hope you enjoy this return to synesthete!Bucky, and I greatly appreciate the comments and kudos you left on my previous fics, and I would greatly appreciate any comments and kudos on this fic. I love talking to people about my dear synesthete!Bucky and about synesthesia in general, since I am a synesthete myself. 
> 
> This is also my first chaptered fic for this fandom. Special thanks to ravenously - I was reading through your comments on my other fics, and they encouraged me to post this. Thank you. 
> 
> Title and chapter titles from "For years my heart inquired of me" by Hafiz.

When he wakes, he is screaming, harsh noise flashing dark across his consciousness, and he can't see the color. The colors left him long ago, like everything else did on that brutal winter day. He remembers pain and euphoria, and seeing every color like a sunrise in his mind, but it's all gone now, and all that remains is numb and dark. All that remains is what they did, and what he did, and the body that he must force to move. 

So he moves, so the body moves, and he groans as the metal of his arm shifts. Everything that once was easy is now hard, and he lost his grace when he fell. 

Slowly, he extracts himself from the twisted, too-hot sheets – _from the twisted, warped metal_ – and stumbles into the bathroom. The water from the shower doesn't have a color, but he remembers when it did, the sound of it eliciting sparks in his sight. He forces himself to stand beneath the shower head, the water falling like purified rain onto his sweating skin, onto the metal. He is always reminded of the metal. He would give even his memory of the colors to lose the metal, that emblem of death and destruction and crying, sobbing, wailing. Of blood.

When he closes his eyes, he sees blood. The deep red of it is the only color that he sees vividly amongst all of the grey and the black that coats the inside of his eyelids. He remembers blood on snow, on steel, on flesh, running in rivulets down skin. 

Sometimes, when he becomes too desperate to breathe, when he wants nothing more than to see his colors again, he becomes reckless. 

_The Winter Soldier is never reckless. He is precise, exacting. He is a machine._

And yes, he is. But he – whoever he is, now – is not that, will never be that again. He is falling, and his fall is hurting. 

When he becomes reckless, he seeks the danger that he wrought on others. He holds the pistol to his head and closes his eyes. He holds the knife, so sharp, to his skin, and closes his eyes. Maybe, he thinks – maybe – if he can hurt, then he will feel again. And maybe – just maybe – if he can feel again, then he will see his colors again. 

It seems, though, that they, his captors, his trainers, his masters, still have a hold on him, for the metal arm is unmoving, refusing to pull the trigger or press the blade into his skin. The arm that hurt so many refuses to hurt its own, for it owns him, his flesh, his mind. 

He steps out of the shower, the metal bracing his body – shaking, so weak – against the peeling wall. He reaches for a towel, his long dark hair sticking to his face, and he dries his skin. The metal never rusts. Sometimes, he wishes that it would, wishes that it would rust and fall off of him, and with it its hold on him. Their hold on him. 

_He is rebelling._

_What do we do with those who rebel?_

_We push them back down._

There are tears on his skin, running down his cheeks, and he falls forward, towel sliding from his hands – one hand his, one hand theirs. His chest heaves and his vision goes black, all black, and the sound of his breath, the sound of the water still running in the shower, the sound of metal hitting tile floor, holds no color. 

When he finds that he can see again, his cheek is against the cold tile floor. He feels woozy, distant, like he is not himself. He hasn’t felt like himself ever since he fell from the sky. 

Shakily, he stands, reaching for the towel and wrapping it around himself. He is the only one here – he checked for two days before sleeping – but nakedness is vulnerability, and vulnerability is forbidden. Vulnerability is death. 

_He is crying. Why is he crying?_

_Pain is a part of life. You will feel a lot of pain._

He hears the voices, clear as day, but they lack colors. They lack his colors. His colors are gone. 

He would be delusional, he reasons with himself, to expect his colors to ever return to him. After all that he has done, after every death and bleeding wound, surely this is a fit punishment. Surely, this is what he deserves. 

So he walks into the bedroom and changes, quickly, into jeans, a shirt, and a sweatshirt. He does not notice their colors.


	2. lapis lazuli

When he dreams, all he sees is blood. His dreams are always nightmares, but sometimes, he tries to hold on to them, to hold on to the fear, because the full red of the blood is the only color that he sees now. In this world so grey, that spark of red is everything. 

When he wakes, everything is grey. He is sure that some things have colors, but now that his colors have left him, he finds it difficult to concentrate hard enough to see what colors his surroundings may hold. 

He remembers hearing sounds, hearing voices, and seeing the colors stretch across his vision like lightning. He remembers one voice in particular – one beautiful voice – but no matter how hard he tries to remember, he cannot remember the color of that voice. He cannot remember who possessed it, either.  
When he hears sounds now, when he hears people speaking now, he sees nothing. His colors are lost to him, and their absence burns in his chest. He misses the cacophony of colors that would bloom in his sight when walking through a crowd. Now, when he walks through a crowd, he just hears the voices too loud in his ears. 

_What’s wrong with him? Why is he covering his ears?_

He’s crying. 

He pulls the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head, shrouding his face. No one would recognize that face, for they – _his keepers_ – were always so careful to ensure that he wore a mask. He wasn’t sure why they wanted him obscured, then, but he is thankful, in some small way, for it now. He imagines that walking down the sidewalk would be something impossible if he had not been forced to wear that mask then. 

He exits the building in which he lives and turns down the street, heading towards town. He doesn’t remember the name of this town, and he doesn’t really remember how he even got here, but he is here, and his body is walking, and his mind is distant. Everything is normal.

The town is crowded today, full of people, and he supposes that that must mean it is a busy day at the market. The market sells fresh fruit, and sometimes, he likes to buy an apple. Apples are red. There is something about red that makes his heart hurt, but he seeks it out, because this color clearly means something, no matter how terrible, to him. No other colors sing to him now like red does. 

He purchases an apple with a few small coins from an elderly woman, and he walks further into the dense market. The crunch of the apple against his teeth produces no colors, and neither does the din of the market. Everything is normal. Painful, wrenching, full of loss – but normal. 

He glances into booths, trying to avoid the small children running around. Children frighten him, for he knows how they can be frightened, and their scared, sobbing faces pierce through his mind like daggers and he can’t, he can’t – 

He breathes. 

He breathes.

He closes his eyes, and he breathes. 

Slowly, he feels his heartbeat return to a calmer pace, and he keeps walking. He doesn’t open his eyes until there is a tap on his arm – his flesh arm – and he turns. A girl is standing there, a canvas in her hands. 

“Voulez-vous la regarder, ma peinture?” the girl asks, and he doesn’t really know what she’s saying – he finds that he is starting to lose the languages that were once burned into his mind – but the girl seems insistent, and he nods. 

The girl turns the canvas around, and painted upon it is – 

“C’est Captain America!” she exclaims, and he understands the English there. 

Captain America. 

_Pictures, moving so fast in front of his eyes._

This is your Mission. Memorize his face. 

Kill him. 

He is shaking, and the girl is frightened, and he is staring at the painting and the eyes of Captain America – _the Mission_ – seem to be gazing into his eyes and he thinks that he may be scared and it’s just a painting, just this girl’s artwork, but he’s shivering. 

She draws back from him, turning the canvas back around, and he can’t breathe, can’t breathe, and he’s frozen in place until he isn’t, until he’s running, pushing through the crowds of people until he’s free, until he’s in the open air, with the sky above – 

The sky. It’s blue, so blue, so beautiful. And he remembers the face of Captain America, and he sees this blue sky, and something in him starts to unravel.


	3. in its own possession

When his mind clears and he finds that he can breathe again, he sighs heavily. This behavior was – is – unacceptable. The Soldier is unbreakable, in body and mind, and to nearly collapse at the sight of a girl’s painting is nothing short of failure. 

Without the handlers to guide him, to scold him, to push him back into the cold world of forgetting, he walks. He is not sure where his legs are taking him, and he is not sure that he even cares. He has not cared about anything in so long. Occasionally, he stops his march to push his long dark hair from his eyes. He did not previously notice the changing temperatures, the sweat on the back of his neck. Now, it is all too noticeable. He is not uncomfortable – he does not have preferences – but he wants it to change. He supposes that it is significant enough that he wants anything at all, so he does not press this burning question forming in the pit of his stomach any further. 

As he walks, he searches for the colors that no longer push from the back of his mind to his eyes, that no longer sing to him. He sees the green of the trees and the brown of the dirt beneath his feet as he diverges from the established path, but these colors are flat, simply there in front of his eyes. He yearns for the colors that came with words, with music, with emotions so intense that they burned him. 

When the girl showed him her painting, he saw blue, almost like seeing a photograph representing the link between words and colors but not actually seeing that link. The blue makes his heart hurt with its vivacity. He knows that the blue belongs to the man on the bridge, the Mission, whatever the man’s name truly is. A name seems to rest at the tip of his tongue, but he cannot produce the sound. The blue, though, was clear and bright, and it makes him think of hot summer days and cold winter nights and a cough so loud it scared him and a whisper so soft it made him shiver. He knows that these memories, like the blue, belong to the man. He wonders what his place was in these memories and why the blue feels like it partly belongs to him as well. He is unused to the concept of having possessions, but he thinks that the blue may be as good a place to start as any. 

His feet grow tired, but he does not stop. He has begun to feel his muscles atrophy, and he knows that if his keepers could find him now, they would punish him. He has thought of punishing himself, for it is what he deserves. 

Here, though, in this painful moment, his feet sore in his worn boots and his mind screaming for memories lost to time, he turns to his colors, and he tries to call them back to him. He closes his eyes and creates soundscapes in his mind, symphonies and whispered words, but the link is broken, and the colors have never responded to his command. They are untrainable, and he hopes that they may be unbreakable. Perhaps they are only gone-for-now, not gone-for-forever. 

He stumbles and catches himself, flesh and metal hands braced. He remembers flesh hand on flesh hand, flesh hand on too-warm cheek, and he thinks that both of his hands may have been flesh once. The metal is a part of him, but he hates that it does not yet feel completely his. It still belongs to his keepers, a sore reminder of their power and control. 

Finally, he reaches some semblance of civilization, and he walks into the town. He does not know what he will find here. But he now remembers a color, a solitary color, and perhaps he may see it once more.


End file.
